I’m not sure why weended up in Great Linford[near Milton Keynes], but it’s a good recordingstudio. Polly had been recording at Townhouse 3as well, and we were all very upset when thatstudio got closed down. I think she was lookingfor another studio that had the potential to be abit like that. I think she wanted to be away fromwhere she was living too – you stayed at GreatLinford. She was on a very particular path there,she was making quite a straight record in a funnyway. I’m not quite sure how she got to that pointbecause it didn’t seem very typical of her, to behonest. But, you know, she’s a real ‘zone’ person.She gets into the zone of what she wants to doand that becomes the focus, very strongly, forwhat happens with each project. That’s whereeverything is focused. I was credited asa producer on Stories…, but there’s a sort ofarbitrary side to that, really. The producer is theperson who guides the overall sound, and tosome degree, sometimes everyone’s doing that.All the Bad Seeds stuff is usually credited as‘produced by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’,although there’s obviously people in the bandwho were doing more of the production workthan other people – usually me and Nick andBlixa. With Stories… we were there from thebeginning, so it was treated like a team. Pollytook us in, me and Rob Ellis, and wanted us toguide the production. So then you feel moreof a responsibility to always be on board, andto always have an idea or an opinion, as opposedto skiving off and not being involved for half aday or whatever.

PJ HarveyLet England Shake (ISLAND, 2011)

Picking up anotherMercury Prize, PJ’seighth LP saw the singer,Mick Harvey, JohnParish and Jean-MarcButty record in St Peter’sChurch in Eype, Dorset.

It was great recording in a church. We spent about five weeks there.It was all close mic’d – I don’t think we used much ofthe ambient sound ’cos it was just too wild. But abit seeps in anyway. Polly became very interestedin war themes and WWI, and a couple of otherconflicts, and I also have an interest in some ofthat. So we discussed a lot of that stuff. She had alot of ideas about it, but I didn’t contribute to anyof the writing – Polly doesn’t really co-write lyricswith people [laughs], she works very hard onthem in her own time. But we talked a lot aboutideas and exchanged ideas. Polly used our voicesa lot on this and her latest [2016’s The Hope SixDemolition Project], she likes ensemble singing,and on Let England Shake there’s quite a few bitswhere my voice is featured, like on “The ColourOf The Earth” where I sing some of it solo – that’san odd one, isn’t it? But then the most beautifulbit is when we’re all singing together. She’sa much stronger singer than I am but the blend isimportant. It was hard to envisage somethingthis unusual-sounding having a big impact – bythe end we were thinking: ‘Is everyone gonnathink this is crazy?’ It’s such a weird record.

Carla told the Rock 105 radio station earlier in the year about the musical direction for BUTCHER BABIES' next record: "Me and Heidi and all the rest of the band, of course, as well, we've been sharing notes and talking about our vision for the next album and trying some different things and bringing in some different influences that we haven't done before, and we're really excited."

She continued: "I was always a huge PJ Harvey fan and a fan of Poe — if you remember Poe from the '90s. When I was growing up, I loved them. So even though I'm a die-hard, old-school thrash metal chick, I really loved some of that stuff. And I'm thinking about how we could incorporate a little bit of that kind of sound."

I was inspired by an interview that I saw with PJ Harvey where she was talking about a record she did, Let England Shake, which is a record about war. She was talking about how war is a cliché topic but still relevant. So many people have written about war, but it took her this period of time to feel like she could have written about war. I was married for seven or eight years, went through a separation, and now being new to dating, this is the first time where I’m myself. I meet someone and don’t have something I’m holding back. There’s no secret that I’m trans. And [I’m] starting to examine the way that’s represented in culture in mainstream society. For instance, I used to really like going to the movie theater and watching dumb romantic comedies as a way to kill a couple hours during the day, to escape the heat. But after I came out I had trouble identifying a lot of the times with the characters just because I didn’t feel they were speaking to me—though they weren’t necessarily before, I was just going along with the guise. I feel like that’s maybe something that needs to be leveraged for trans people.

You’ve come closer than anyone to breaking a properly new UK act this year, with Jack Garratt…That’s mad. It’s scary. It is what it is though. With Jack, it’s easy to look at him and the sales and go, Well, that’s not where people would or should expect it to be.

But there’s a breed of artists where it’s about the second album. And it should be about the second album. We live in a culture where we all want it right now but I’m glad that wasn’t the case with Amy, I’m glad that wasn’t the case with Catfish and I’m glad it wasn’t the case with PJ Harvey.

Jack will deliver that special second album and people should not throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to artist development.

You must be particularly pleased that Island’s current success has come with such a wide variety of artists?

It’s hard to imagine two artists as different as PJ Harvey and Ariana Grande…

I always said that Island is a broad church. Whether it’s American repertoire or domestic, you’ve got to be in the game.

Polly [Harvey] signed to Island when I started, we were a month apart and our birthdays are a month apart as well. To be here, putting out her latest record and it getting to No.1 was a feat for Island Records. As a label, you do have to reflect the majority of what’s going on in the marketplace.

MG: But you’ve always had more than just guitar music going on — there have always been other elements woven in there.

JH: Yeah, definitely. I never wanted to just be a retro guitar band. It was always really important to have a drum machine and stuff. Polly (PJ) Harvey really taught me that — that you can be anything you want if you don’t have a regular drummer, almost. Polly Harvey can make a record like Rid of Me that’s just like, WOW and then make a record like Is This Desire?, which is this glitchy, really brutal sub-bass and drum-machine record. But you never question it — you never think, “Ooh, that’s not Polly Harvey,” you know? It’s always PJ Harvey no matter what. And I think that taught me that’s how I wanted my band to be.

Do you have an artist right now that you see as a role model?I would maybe say PJ Harvey. I find it nice when women do it themselves because it’s such a male-dominated business, the music industry, especially pop music. I think it’s very important when female producers and songwriters get a lot of attention.

If you could work with any artist, who would it be and what would they bring to Scarlet Rascal? John Parish. About once a year I find myself stood behind him in a crowd at some event but never bring myself to tap him on the shoulder.